1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gripper housing for a weaving-machine gripper, in particular for a drawing gripper consisting of one or more metal plates, some edge of which constitutes at least in part yarn guide elements.
2. Related Art
In order to weave at high rates, a gripper should be as lightweight as possible. For that purpose the gripper dimensions are made smaller. However, despite minimum sizes being mandatory, there are limits to such reduction in size.
Such gripper housings illustratively are known from the patent document WO 99/18274 and comprise a basic frame in the form of one or more pieces of bent sheetmetal, in particular steel sheetmetal. In order to attain further weight reduction, the thickness of the sheetmetal is reduced. Even though thicknesses of 0.3 to 0.5 mm might be feasible with respect to mechanical strength, practice dictates larger thickness. The edges of such thin sheetmetal act as blades or knives that immediately sever yarns the moment they touch them, in particular fillings which are inserted into a yarn clamp with the gripper-housing edges acting as guide elements and which then hold them in readiness in a specific way.
The objective of the present invention is to design a gripper housing of the above kind in such a manner that its weight may be reduced further.